Last Thursday, the EPA and the DOT announced a new proposed rule on automobile fuel efficiency standards. The Obama administration’s rule promulgated in 2012 was supposed to achieve a “corporate average” by the car companies for their new vehicles of 54.5 mpg by 2025. Instead it increased the cost of automobiles and the cost of gas.

The American people apparently are not capable of choosing how fuel-efficient they want their new cars to be. Fuel efficiency is not the number one issue in a car purchase. The most popular vehicles in recent years have been pickup trucks which are not particularly fuel efficient. The Ford F-150 is rated at 16 mpg city and 22 mpg highway — nowhere near 54.3 mpg. The new rule will end the ongoing increases in CAFE standards after 2020 applicable to new vehicles sold.

A report from the Environmental Protection Agency has found that including ethanol into the U.S. gasoline supply is wreaking havoc on the atmosphere and on the soil.

In a study titled “Biofuels and the Environment: The Second Triennial Report to Congress,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that ethanol derived from corn and soybeans is causing serious harm to the environment. Water, soil and air quality were all found to be adversely affected by biofuel mandates.

“Evidence since enactment of [the Energy Independence and Security Act] suggests an increase in acreage planted with soybeans and corn, with strong indications from observed changes in land use that some of this increase is a consequence of increased biofuel production,” read a portion of the 159-page report.

Other findings from the study show: More ethanol from corn has resulted in greater nitrogen oxide emissions, greater demand for biofuel feedstock has contributed to harmful algae blooms, and increased irrigation has placed greater stress on water sources.

But climate change has nothing whatsoever to do with fuel mileage rules. No rules at all would have no effect on the climate, nor would extremely severe rules. No effect. None. As Holman Jenkins said in the Wall Street Journal:

If climate activists really think any reduction in CO2 is infinitely valuable and cost vs. benefit doesn’t matter, why are they still exhaling?

Then why did Mr. Obama draft such a restrictive fuel economy number? “his flunkies, as documented in a House investigation, simply were looking for a impressive-sounding number to serve the administration’s political interests at the time. The rules were jiggered to help U.S. auto makers sell pickups and SUV’s so Mr. Obama could claim a successful auto bailout.” Under Trump rules, or under Obama rules, the effect of fuel mileage rules or of adding ethanol to the gasoline would be nothing at all.

The New York Times recently published an article claiming absolutely that “global greening” from carbon dioxide emissions would be terrible for the planet, and has been a negligible benefit if any, to crops.

Dr. Patrick Moore took issue with the claim that CO2 has provided only a “small” benefit to crops, noting that millions of plants and crops were grown in greenhouses where CO2 is pumped in to enhance growth.

Try to tell a greenhouse grower that the effect of higher CO2 is “small”. They will laugh you out of the room with their 25-80% gain in yield. The @nytimes has become a bad joke. 800-1200 ppm CO2 is optimal. It has been lower during Pleistocene than any time in Earth history.

People who point out what the science says, are usually referred to as “climate deniers” as if they were denying that climate change is a fact. The climate is always changing, we have hot years and cold years, and summer and winter.

Drastic, debilitating changes take place only in the computer programs of scientists who put more faith in their faulty computer programs than in what is actually being measured across the world. And more than that:

It was at a news conference in Brussels in Early February 2015, that Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity—but to destroy capitalism.

This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.